


Things Done In Earnest

by Mab (Mab_Browne)



Category: Hyakujitsu no Bara | Maiden Rose
Genre: Inexperienced Dom, Light Dom/sub, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 10:58:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6114394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mab_Browne/pseuds/Mab
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taki wears the sword to remind himself that things cannot go on the way that they've been between Klaus and him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Things Done In Earnest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [elmyraemilie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/elmyraemilie/gifts).



> Quite a few years ago now, ElmyraEmilie bid $20 for a Maiden Rose fic for a fan charity auction so that I could pretend that I'd made a contribution. ;-) She knew I was good for it eventually.
> 
> Many thanks to Smillaaraq for a really good and encouraging beta. I've played with it since then and so any errors are of course my fault.
> 
> This is Maiden Rose, which contains canon partner betrayal and rape, which is referenced here. Written before the release of the The Thorn Crown doujinshi.

Taki was reviewing his senior aides’ reports when Suguri was announced unexpectedly. There was a small, raw split in the skin on Suguri’s cheekbone and pink puffiness down the whole left side of his face that would darken into bruising soon.

Taki shoved his chair back from his desk with a shriek of wood against wood. “Whom will I take great pleasure in personally disciplining?” he asked in the room’s sudden hush.

Suguri came to his desk, a model of soldierly self-command, and that was cue enough to Taki. Suguri was never anything other than respectful but a certain fondness often lightened his interactions with Taki – or had in the past. Taki was almost prepared when Suguri said, “The matter concerns Captain von Wolfstadt, my lord.”

“You are dismissed,” Taki said to his secretaries and aides. Uemura looked as if he might speak but swallowed it. “I will return to this review shortly, and advise you if I have any concerns.” His hands neatened his papers with steady precision. His voice was strong, despite the sudden constriction in his throat.

The room was left empty except for Suguri and Taki. “Take a seat. Please,” Taki requested of Suguri.

Suguri sat. If a man could stand to attention with his buttocks planted on a chair seat, then Suguri mastered that art.

“Captain von Wolfstadt sought a meal in the mess this lunchtime, and there was an altercation. Someone bumped him. He became aggressive. I sought to intervene with the result that you see. Captain von Wolfstadt was immediately repentant. He was clearly not well and I have installed him in one of the small rooms off the main infirmary.”

“He was not… well?”

“I have publicly diagnosed an infection, probably present in a low-grade state since his interrogation with the Chief Aide de Camp. Captain von Wolfstadt is a man of strong constitution, and takes pride in being thus. Such men often do not recognise or accept sickness even, or perhaps especially, when faced with mild forms of delirium. It is my stated opinion that a feverish disorder was the cause of his actions in the mess and that sulfa drugs should ensure a return to health, and proper behaviour.” There was a brief pause, in which neither man remarked on the likelihood of proper behaviour from Klaus von Wolfstadt.

Taki sat with equal correctness in his chair, and considered Suguri from across his desk. Suguri was a second father to Taki, even if protocol forbade any acknowledgement of that. A man should bring pride to his father.

“And your private opinion?”

Suguri’s eyes closed a moment, before he looked once more at Taki and began to speak. Loyal forbearance kept his voice even and his opinions restrained. “It is my suspicion that Captain von Wolfstadt is suffering from amphetamine withdrawal. He has not admitted it to me, but neither has he denied it. He would mix with people in the foreign enclave? With so many of them expelled or leaving, I presume that his supplier is also gone.”

“I see. Thank you for your discretion.”

Suguri shifted uncomfortably on his seat. “My discretion… When the captain was earlier under my care, I noted that he required higher than normal doses of medication, for both amphetamines and morphine. He used both for the No-Man’s land mission.”

Of course he did, Taki thought, and took a slow breath. If anything surprised him, it was Suguri’s silence up until now. “You sought the proper course of action at that time, just as you have now,” he said quietly. Suguri nodded, but the trouble in his face was clear.

“My lord…” Suguri’s voice was less correct, more gentle. “Did you suspect any of this?”

“I thought that it was a matter that was past. Clearly I was wrong. Is Captain von Wolfstadt able to be seen?”

Suguri hesitated.

“He is my knight. You have advised that he is not suffering any contagious condition. Therefore, he _is_ fit to be seen.”

“Yes, my lord.” Such quiet decorum from the one man who knew nearly absolutely everything. Taki was washed with a painful tide of love frothed with shame. He stood, and so, of course, did Suguri. Taki walked around his desk and as he came close to Suguri he circled his hand around his forearm. He couldn’t look him in the face but he nodded, not quite a bow, and spoke softly. “Thank you, lieutenant. Thank you for all that you have done in this matter.”

“No thanks are needed.”

If he and Klaus were fully discovered, disgrace would fall upon too many people close to Taki, and this man not least of all. And yet…. Klaus. Taki couldn’t give him up. Could not. So who was Taki to have assured Suguri that the man who offered him violence and disrespect would be disciplined? Who was he to upbraid Klaus for his addictions? (But he had promised Taki! He had promised him, and anger was a harsh blue flame behind Taki’s eyes that threatened to blind him.)

Klaus could not be permitted to add yet another risk to the many that already beset them, and so Taki walked with Suguri, his destination a tiny room off the infirmary which was little more than a closet and barely able to fit a camp bed. Klaus would fill it. It was something that Taki both loved and hated, that Klaus was such a very big man – a force of nature. A great, sculptured rock, carved by wind and water. But that rock perpetually teetered on the edge of a precipice, with Taki in its path. That was only fair, Taki supposed, since he had loosened its moorings in the first place. If it was only Taki that might be crushed in the fall, then he could accept that.

There were men drilling in the courtyard. They passed Stores, and Taki could hear the head quartermaster, an excitable officer, raise his voice over some error or other. One of the few female aides, Hasebe’s niece, passed almost at a trot, her greeting a low murmur as they met and parted. If it was only Taki who was crushed in the fall – but it wouldn’t be.

Once he was sure that they were out of earshot of any listeners, Suguri outlined what might be expected from a man in Klaus’s condition as they walked. The infirmary corridors, when they reached them, were dim. The day was grey and dreary even in the open air. Here inside it was almost oppressively dark. Suguri made his excuses. His words were impeccable; his face showed strain. Then he was gone, his door shut behind him, and Taki paused by the door that led to Klaus.

This building was new, and not particularly solid. Klaus could hardly have missed their booted footsteps on the hard floor, or Suguri’s departure. Klaus would notice any signs of hesitation, but Taki hesitated all the same, before anger at his weakness forced him to open the door and step through, head held high.

The room was barely wider than the length of the camp bed, which had been tipped on its side to lie alongside the wall straight in front of Taki, underneath a high, narrow window. Klaus lay sprawled on the floor, ignoring the bed which he would certainly have overwhelmed. He lay on his side, his back to Taki, asleep. Sweat stained his shirt in a dark, wet line that followed his spine. The room looked more like a prison cell than a hospital room.

If Suguri was right in his diagnosis, then Klaus was sufficiently hard ridden by withdrawal that his temper was uncertain. Taki’s hands clenched. Klaus was not alone in that condition. He prodded Klaus, not gently, in the small of his back with the toe of his boot.

“Wake up. Wake up, Klaus. Get up.”

Klaus stirred, his body uncoiling somewhat, and then he stilled.

“Yes. I’m here. What did you expect?” Taki swallowed, trying to ease a tight, dry throat. “Get up!”

Klaus shambled to his feet like some great golden bear disturbed from its hibernation, and leaned against the wall to Taki’s right. He hunched there, his hands jammed into his pockets, his eyes downcast, and was silent. Their eyes met, and they stared at each other; Klaus looked away first.

“Nothing to say?” Taki enquired with a clipped fury that Klaus flinched under as if stung by a handful of small, flung stones.

“You weren’t supposed to know.”

“That much is obvious. The rest… Explain to me, if you can.”

“I told you that I wouldn’t touch you. That way. I meant it.”

“You also told me that the marks on your arms were from Suguri’s treatment of your injuries. I was impressed by your vitality. How long, Klaus? How long?”

“I… I needed to be what you needed,” Klaus faltered. The words only filled Taki with a deeper fury.

“You could no longer sate yourself with me, so you chose this?” He ripped at Klaus’s sleeve, hauling it up his arm to show the damning marks. “This? You lied to me!”

Klaus jerked his arm from Taki’s hold, and closed his hands around Taki’s arms with a grip like stone. Taki looked into his face and his heart dropped into some small, cold space. How often had they stood together like this, anger, even violence vibrating between them? There was a time he would never have believed it possible; not even so very long ago as most people measured their lives. Yet, here they were again. 

“I did it for you!” Klaus growled. “So I wouldn’t have to lie! I gave it up, and you were never supposed to have known!”

“Let me go.”

Klaus stared at him, baffled almost, before his gaze strayed to his hands. They must be white-knuckled and straining in their grip, but Taki didn’t look down, or away. He kept his eyes on Klaus, and repeated, “Let me go.” 

Klaus was wild-eyed. “If that idiot had watched where he was going… if Suguri hadn’t interfered…” 

“I would still have known. Did you think you could hide _this_ from me?”

Klaus’s face twisted in wild, pure rage, and Taki braced himself. He had never fought back when Klaus laid hands on him before. He had struggled, yes. Denied. But then Klaus had discovered the simplest version of the truth, not by Taki’s wish, and there had been unexpected hope that everything wasn’t irrevocably twisted and broken. Taki wasn’t ready to surrender that hope and submit again. Revulsion rose in him but he considered strike points regardless, ready if not willing - except that Klaus let go. He backed away, his hands raised as if in surrender, and then with a howl like a beast’s, he struck his fists against the wall. One. Two. Three times, before he slid down the wall to sit collapsed upon the floor.

“I gave it up, and you weren’t supposed to know. Oh, fuck, Taki. I’m so tired. And I didn’t lie. I stopped. I stopped.” His voice was empty, exhausted.

The weakness of reaction flooded through Taki, and his voice trembled. “You’re tired. You must sleep. I will arrange with Lieutenant Suguri for you to return to your quarters. Meals will be brought to you, and you will rest.” Taki extended a hand, and Klaus took it, rising to his knees before he wrapped his arms around Taki’s hips and drew him close, his face pressed against the tailored cloth and buttons of Taki’s jacket. It was awkward, this joining. Taki stood stiff and discomfited, but then he rested his hand upon the back of Klaus’s head. Klaus shook, long, deep tremors that came in surges. Taki waited, but they showed no sign of passing. Shameful. It was shameful. Not the openness of Klaus’s need and passion; that was Klaus, it was something that Taki loved about him. If only he could have loved it more purely. Gently (unwillingly, aware that he took satisfaction in the desperation of Klaus’s hold - and how very wrong was it that he did so?) he reached behind him and detached Klaus’s hands. “Get up,” he said. It was gentle, but it was still a command.

Klaus rose.

“Lieutenant Suguri has made excuses for your condition. I will arrange for a medical escort to your rooms.”

Klaus’s mouth twisted like he’d tasted something bitter at Suguri’s name, but he nodded. “I suppose I should make my apologies. Again.”

“Were your apologies not sincere in the first instance?”

Klaus’s gaze dropped to the floor and lifted again, in pathetic bravado. “I certainly sincerely regretted the circumstances,” he said wryly.

“You must say what is proper - and sincere.” Taki came a little closer, and saw how Klaus relaxed infinitesimally, and the deeper, steadying breaths he took. “You have no liking for each other… but we are in his debt.”

“I know. That’s what I hate. Still, I can’t blame him for caring for you, can I now. The one thing we have in common.” Klaus’s hand, his hot and sweaty hand, cupped Taki’s face. Taki drew back, and Klaus’s hand hovered unsteadily before it flopped to his side. “My quarters, you said. I look forward to it. It’s a touch claustrophobic in here.”

“I will make the arrangements,” Taki said, and withdrew. In the hallway, where Klaus couldn’t see, he laid his fingers where that touch against his skin still burned.

~*~

Klaus spent most of the next twenty-four hours sleeping, and Taki heartily wished that he could follow his example. Instead he lay awake that night, rising sometimes to look at reports while still in his night clothes, and then returning to bed to find that he still wasn’t able to sleep. He was on his own finding a strategy to deal with this new disaster, and that was entirely fitting. He’d created it after all. Klaus at least had been honest enough until the drugs– honest in love, in rage, in violence, in loyalty. Whereas Taki… he had never spoken a lie, but he imagined his ancestors recoiling in horror at the truths that he’d withheld.

Taki filled the next day with necessary tasks, with desperate planning, with a hundred and one cares. Klaus was hardly the least of those, but it was still hard to justify the compulsion that led Taki to spend time sitting by Klaus’s bed simply watching him sleep. He was beautiful, and abandoned in his sleep, his long limbs spread out across the bed. Troubled also. Twitchy. He would murmur and mutter, nothing coherent. A button had come loose and was hanging by only a couple of threads at the cuff of Klaus’s shirt. He smelled of sweat; it should have been disgusting, but it wasn’t.

Taki’s time here was rationed, doled out between his responsibilities, and he would have to go soon. So of course Klaus rolled over in bed and opened his eyes. He smiled, drowsy and boyish, and the charming, solicitous young man of the Luckenwalde academy reappeared before Taki’s eyes. “I didn’t know that my snoring was so very spellbinding.”

“You do not snore,” Taki said softly.

“And there go all explanations of your presence,” Klaus said, and leaned up on an elbow, suddenly more alert. “Everything is quiet?”

“As quiet as it ever may be.”

Klaus nodded at this assessment and then said, “I feel better today.”

“Lieutenant Suguri said two days in your quarters would be best.”

“Taki, I’ll go crazy,” Klaus pleaded.

“Then you must go crazy alone rather than in the mess.”

“Damn it!” It was nearly shouted, before Klaus sat up on the edge of the mattress, his lips pressed together. He shut his eyes and rocked back and forth a few times, before he looked at Taki once more. Stared at him.

Taki chose to ignore the irritability of withdrawal. “I was remembering,” he said.

“Yes?”

“When I was a stranger in a foreign land, you took care of me. It has become increasingly clear to me that a return of that courtesy is owed you.”

Klaus’s hands clenched, but he made no move to rise. “You were my job, you know that,” he said off-handedly. His eyes were on the cheap chair in the corner of the room.

“Only at the very beginning.” 

“You’re still my job.”

It was so patent a lie that Taki couldn’t be wounded by even the intention to try to hurt. “A fiction. An excuse so that your superiors would let you cross the border without incident.” Those beautiful days before the border. They were gone, and Klaus was the foreigner now, and it was past time that Taki accepted his responsibilities.

“Taki. I don’t think that this is a good time to talk about this. I don’t have the patience. I don’t have… anything right now. I hate to admit it but Suguri’s right. I should stay here.”

“This evening,” Taki said with a resolve that was unexpected even to him. “Drink. Eat. Sleep. And attend on me this evening. At 20.30.”

Klaus frowned, suspicious. “In your rooms?” Taki nodded. “Perhaps I should wash too.”

Taki stood. “Yes. Do that. You have a button loose on your left cuff.”

Klaus lifted his arm. The marks on his hand where his knuckles hit the wall yesterday were still raw and barely scabbed. “So I do.” He ceased his examination of his clothes, and returned his gaze to Taki’s face. “I don’t want courtesy from you.”

“I know what you want from me, Klaus.” It had taken so many miserable twists and turns of thought to say that out loud.

Klaus raised an eyebrow at this plain speaking and then shrugged. “Ah. Well, subtlety was never my strong point, now was it?”

Taki turned on his heel and left, before he could say more.

That evening found Taki in a heretofore unknown quandary – he did not know how to dress. All his life he had dressed as necessary – in clothes for exercise, clothes for ritual, clothes for duty - and his current confusion unnerved him. It seemed a bad omen for the evening. To wear his uniform jacket was patently foolish. His tie threatened to choke him and he removed it, and undid the top button of his shirt. This left the hollow of his throat visible, and painfully naked. 

Taki took a cloth and sponged his face. He had done that the morning after the first time he’d let Klaus lay hands on him at Luckenwalde. Klaus had stood beside him in the small barracks bathroom, shaving. His face had been bearded with soapy lather, and Taki remembered feeling both smug and a touch overwhelmed that his own beard then had required no more than token attention with a razor twice a week at best. That morning he’d needed only a wash. Klaus had winked at him, and Taki had been suffused with heat at the memory of kisses and deeper liberties, even as his skin had goose pimpled in the early morning chill.

That was past and Taki was home now. He left his bathroom, and remained in his shirt sleeves, tieless and unbuttoned at his neck. But he took up his sword and scabbard and carefully fastened the belt around his waist. The action calmed something in him. He would do this thing. He _could_ do this. There was no right choice for him if he kept Klaus close, and he had to accept that. A time had come to choose at least one straight path, wherever it lead.

Klaus was on time. He knocked at the door, but didn’t wait for Taki’s permission to enter. He was unaccustomedly neat for Klaus in his off-duty hours, and Taki wondered if Klaus had found it as difficult as he did to choose appropriately for this evening. The shirt looked fresh and the tie was carefully knotted and tucked beneath the shirt collar. The boots had clearly been polished. He looked very handsome in this unexpected correctness. Taki found his eyes lingering on the broadness of Klaus’s shoulders in the uniform jacket, and was hard put to suppress a wildly improper impulse that Klaus would look even more attractive disarrayed.

Klaus’s eyes widened when he saw Taki, but he said nothing at first, only threw himself into one of the chairs. “An interesting combination of formality and dishabille this evening.” Klaus had spoken one sentence, and already Taki felt at a disadvantage.

He remained standing, and rested one hand on the hilt of his sword. Klaus’s gaze strayed there and away again. “It suited my purpose for this occasion.”

“And what would that be?” Klaus asked, irritability edging his tone.

“To keep the sparring between us to the exercise ground in the first instance,” Taki snapped, and then tried to calm himself. This was not how he wanted things between them, for them to spear and stab each other with hurtful words. “There is a debt lying between us.” 

Klaus sat up from his slouch and leaned forward with his elbows on his thighs, listening and wary. “Is that why you’re wearing your sword? To settle our debt?”

Taki fumbled on, formal, and very possibly pompous to Klaus’s ears. He remembered Luckenwalde students mocking him for his Oriental aristocrat ways. “I wear it to remind myself that things cannot go on… the way that they have gone.”

Klaus’s face grew drawn. “Spit it out, Taki. If you want me to march out to my execution then I’ll do that. But for once just say it. Borrow some Western forthrightness and tell me what you want.”

What I want is you. Taki thought it, but that was altogether too huge a thought for speech. And Klaus’s casual talk of execution hurt. Taki had meant to try to explain a little more, but his temper was pricked. If forthrightness was what Klaus demanded…. “What I want is that you remove your clothes.” Klaus’s face went blank – Taki had seldom seen him so completely at a loss.

Klaus stood, but he came no closer. “Why? Is that why you’re in your shirtsleeves? To save on the laundry when you spit me with the ceremonial pig poker?” Confusion was stamped into every line of his body, but there was also a dawning suspicion, as if he suspected himself to be the butt of a very poor joke. “Just what sort of debts are we discussing here?”

Taki thought that his heart might hammer its way out through his ribs. “A debt that means that you owe me obedience.”

“Obedience.” Klaus rolled the word around his mouth as if trying to decide whether he’d taken a bite of bad food. He still appeared utterly nonplussed. “It was my understanding that my obedience requires many things but not anything that meant me taking off my clothes. Emphatically the opposite, in fact.” Confusion was giving way to anger. “There were months, months where I…” He stopped. There were words that even Klaus couldn’t say. “Now it’s ‘Klaus, strip’ without so much as a by your leave? I’ve met some perverts in my time…” And then there were words that he could say. Taki’s hand went to his sword hilt in genuine fury, not a studied gesture of command. “I don’t know what game you think you’re playing, my _master_ , but you know something? For once I don’t think that I’m prepared to play.”

Klaus strode to the door. It was opened and shut with an unseemly and echoing bang, and it was all that Taki could do to keep silence. His furious cry would have been as telling as other sounds that he had repressed over long past months. The choked-back noise nearly crushed his throat, and he was suddenly distressingly aware that his eyes were burning with tears. Hardly the first time that he had wept out the humiliation of his mistakes. War, with all its responsibilities for hundreds, even thousands, came unfairly more easily than love, and its responsibility only for one.

He was a very great fool.

Sickened with disappointment and grief, he removed his sword. It had served the purpose of making Klaus take him seriously at one level at least. There were reports that he must consider since his original purpose for the evening had gone awry, but first he must settle himself. He called for tea. It was served to him on a lacquered tray. Fragrant steam issued from the graceful curving spout of the teapot. The cup was nearly a translucent shell, and Taki abruptly recalled the thick, white stoneware mugs of acidic black tea in the mess at Luckenwalde. No wonder Klaus had preferred the rich coffee served in the little café in the town. A pity that the exigencies of war (and Eastern taste) meant that he was unlikely to taste coffee again any time soon.

Time passed, perhaps an hour and there was a knock at the door. Taki’s head jerked up from his perusal of his papers, and foolish hope swamped him. He overcame it, and called, “Enter,” with a good enough show of indifferent authority.

It was Klaus, with his jacket collar still turned up against the night chill. “I half expected to be frogmarched back to your presence,” he said. He attempted a nonchalant air but his voice was betrayingly unsteady.

”I never sent soldiers for you before. Why would I do it now?” Taki got up from his desk and crossed a few steps across the floor. “Shut the door, Klaus. Lock it.”

Klaus did so and then stood not far from the door, poised as if for flight, as if he might turn and run yet. “You’re not wearing your sword,” he said.

“Will I need to?” Taki asked.

Klaus shook his head. “No. No, Taki, you won’t need to. But I don’t understand.”

Taki gathered strength to try again. If he failed then there would be no other attempts. “I said that there was a debt between us –and it’s one that I owe to you. It is my duty as your master…” Immediately, he saw the misstep on Klaus’s face and broke off, seeking for other words. “Only a fool takes possession of something valuable without care for it.”

Klaus looked as if he might try to speak and Taki lifted one hand in a staying gesture, and was mercifully obeyed. He swallowed painfully. “This thing – now that you know… a little of my other obligations…. It’s not right that I leave the responsibility with you. If we do this now it must be by my choosing and by my command.” He sounded like a stammering peasant boy, and sought for self-control. Men needed surety in a leader, and what he could do on a battlefield he could do here. “And I do so choose and command now, whatever has happened in the past.”

Klaus looked at him. What he saw in Taki’s face decided him. He went down on one knee. There was none of his usual, extravagant, almost arrogant sincerity. It was a genuinely uncertain man at Taki’s feet. “You’d best command me, then. Because I don’t know what to do here, Taki. I don’t know.”

Neither do I, Taki did _not_ say. Instead, he took the few steps he needed, and stooped and placed his hand across the nape of Klaus’s neck, sliding his palm neatly under the jacket collar, the touch crossing the boundary of shirt and skin. The scent of cigarettes permeated the jacket, but in this moment, Taki couldn’t care. It was merely another facet of Klaus, who went very, very still, barely appearing to breathe. “You need only do what I ask,” Taki said softly, caught between shame and desire as he always had been with this man. “The responsibility is mine.”

Klaus’s eyes fluttered shut. There was a brief struggle on his face, not rebellion, Taki hoped, but ongoing confusion. He could hardly be surprised at that, but then Klaus said a quiet, “Yes.” They stayed there, caught in place for long moments with skin warm against skin. But Klaus was such a big man, Taki thought, and there was far more skin available, if he only spoke the word.

“Take off your clothes,” he said, letting go of Klaus and stepping back. This second request was more successful than the first, in that Klaus shrugged out of his uniform jacket and then stopped, clearly nonplussed. Taki felt a small, shameful thrill at his uncertainty. Even in pain and violence, maybe especially so in that, Klaus had surged forward like a river in spate, and to see him like this, obedient and assuming nothing, was not unpleasant to the pettier, unworthy part of Taki’s soul. 

“You may stand. Drape your clothes upon that chair.”

Klaus did as asked, undressing without hesitation or coyness, although he didn’t meet Taki’s eyes. The clothes were neatly placed, the boots carefully alongside each other in a way that Taki had seldom seen outside of Luckenwalde barracks discipline. Then Klaus stood, not precisely at attention, not precisely at rest. There was a telling twitch of his hands as he tried to keep himself from clenching them into fists.

Taki had decided that Klaus must know that he was wanted and so he looked – and that was difficult. To not simply shut his eyes and feel, but to be seen desiring, without denial or evasion. He looked, taking in every inch of Klaus’s skin, before lifting his gaze to Klaus’ face. The heat in those golden eyes was familiar, the hunger in them, the anticipation of pleasure. Even the confusion was familiar. Such strangers they so often were to each other.

He came a few steps closer, so that they stood almost touching and then he lifted his arms to loop them around Klaus’s neck. Klaus looked utterly disbelieving a moment and then he tentatively closed his arms around Taki, and still waited, and for that alone, in that moment, Taki loved him utterly. “You may kiss me,” he whispered, and moved by instinct and desire he lifted his hands to envelop Klaus’s head and thread his fingers through that chrysanthemum-gold hair. The intimacy of the touch was as startlingly sweet as the kiss. Klaus made a sound deep in his throat and tightened his grip about Taki, and he immediately went rigid with tension. It brought back too many painful, humiliating memories. He turned his head away, and immediately Klaus released him. A tall man could hardly hide his expression by bowing his head, but Klaus tried, averting his eyes. His breath came in great gasps, and on his face was the expression of a dying man.

“No!” Taki said, in denial of whatever Klaus might have spoken, and took both his hands. “You… you may remove my shirt, and touch my skin.” He disengaged one hand, but only so that he could lift the arm to show his wrist and his shirt cuff. Klaus’s face cleared with obvious relief, and with slow deliberation he undid first one set of buttons, then the other. His fingers rested against the first done-up button at the neck of the shirt, warm against Taki’s chest. The buttons were undone, and the one simple piece of clothing removed with no less care than the most complicated ceremonial garment. 

Taki had turned his back (to let Klaus drop the shirt down his arms, no other reason) and he waited for Klaus’s interpretation of the second part of his instruction. First, those big hands closed gently around the curve of his shoulders, then Klaus kissed the back of his neck. The hands ran warm down Taki’s arms, skimming almost, nothing suggestive of capture, and there were kisses to his shoulders, his back, the side of his ribs, Klaus bent almost double to deliver them. Taki turned, and Klaus straightened, and with great care he took Taki’s face between his hands. Taki remembered their first kiss, a place far away in time and distance now, and shut his eyes. There was one kiss upon his mouth, and then they were peppered across his face, his collarbone, everywhere that Klaus could reach. Then he knelt once more. His hands lay lightly across Taki’s back; Klaus was a man taking dainty bites at his feast, controlling himself for now. But the kisses over Taki’s chest and abdomen grew wilder, while Taki swayed in Klaus’s hold like a tree in a storm, with his hands looped once again across the nape of Klaus’s neck.

“Wait,” he said, not quite believing he would be obeyed. But Klaus did indeed stop. His hold didn’t loosen, but he stopped and looked up, confused, but hopeful… and obedient. Taki found himself beset with dark, discomfiting emotion. This was nothing like the command of battle, where he strived for the goal of survival through victory. This was far more personal. Selfish, but satisfying.

“I want to sit down,” Taki said. “Let me go.” But he tempered the command with a hand cupped over Klaus’s jaw. The skin was smooth, and in long-denied fascination Taki let himself simply feel the shape of Klaus’s face – his skin, the bones of jaw and cheek. For once, it was Klaus who shut his eyes. Taki ran his index finger carefully along one fringe of eyelashes and saw the shudder that went through Klaus’s body at such a barely-there touch. The finger ran between nose and mouth. “You shaved for me,” Taki said, in not a little surprise. 

“You told me to wash. To sew my button. I assumed you wanted me presentable.”

“Yes,” Taki said and bent to kiss Klaus, aware of the pressure at his groin – arousal and a buttoned uniform made an uncomfortable sensation. Strange to lean down (to offer, to condescend). He wondered how it felt to Klaus to kneel like that. Westerners took pride in standing tall, looking even their superiors in the eye with no reserve, but here was Klaus, on his knees before Taki, as he’d willingly offered so many times before. Taki briefly turned his back. The bed lay in his sight, but he ignored it, and turned to stand in front of a small armchair. His hand went to his belt, and Klaus’s strained inhalation sounded loud in the room. Taki felt as if his face was on fire, but he undid himself enough that he was exposed, and sat down, physically more comfortably, but half wishing to be swallowed by the earth.

Wordlessly, he gestured, and Klaus moved to him almost like a wave – the rise, the crest, the fall again at Taki’s feet. “You know what to do,” Taki murmured.

But Klaus paused, his hands resting upon Taki’s still mostly clothed thighs. “Taki. May I ask something?”

A deep shudder of tension ran through Taki – new anxiety, new uncertainty. Was he doing this wrong? “Say it.”

“You do want this? Taki, do you _want_ it?” It was a desperate plea, and Taki reached out a hand, and laid it across Klaus’s and clutched hard. Klaus stared at the grip that held him, then he looked into Taki’s eyes once more.

“As I choose, I told you.

“Choosing isn’t the same as wanting,” Klaus said. His voice sounded as if Taki had seized his throat rather than his hand. “This,” and he stroked the back of one finger against Taki’s arousal, “doesn’t have to be wanted. The body does what it does. We both know that.”

Taki frowned, unsettled but not surprised that Klaus could no more put the past behind them than he could. He was left aware, again, of how many lies could be told with a shut mouth. His face flamed, but he said, “You have never been unwanted.” Then he put his hand firmly upon Klaus’s mouth to guard against both questions and doubt, and leaned forward, so full of feeling that he felt it must split his skin. The hand at Klaus’s mouth moved to curl round his neck, and Taki pressed his forehead to Klaus’s. “Remember the river? They all thought you were dead, polluted, but I still laid hands on you because you’re mine. You will be to the day of your death, and beyond, for my choice.” He paused, and then said roughly, “So do as I ask.”

Letting go, he leaned back. Klaus bent to him like a dog to the hunt, and Taki barely kept back a cry at the shock of pleasure. This touch had always undone him, made him whimper and pant, delighted him, both for the physical pleasure and for the look on Klaus’s face. It was there now, a bone-deep satisfaction. Devotion, if that word could be applied to sex. Certainly determination, and Taki bit his hand. He mustn’t cry out, but he struggled, as the world around him became only sensation. He fought for breath in the aftermath, knowing a terrible urge to strip away his remaining clothing, to spread his legs and let Klaus have absolutely everything.

Because he wanted it so very much, he knew he shouldn’t have it. What Klaus wanted, he would worry about later.

Klaus looked up at him. His lips were reddened, his skin flushed, and Taki suspected he might nearly hurt with waiting for his own climax. But the golden eyes were joyous.

“You may attend to yourself.” Desperate control kept him from faltering as he struggled for the right words. He’d barely been aware of sexual crudities, the words that common men used, until Luckenwalde, and he couldn’t bring himself to use them. Klaus looked genuinely startled. It had been a night of surprises for him. “Do it,” Taki said softly. Perhaps this was what drunkenness felt like – this loose, pleasant lack of care. “Do it, and let me see your face.” 

It took little time. Klaus took pride in his endurance, but there was none tonight, only a brief struggle to keep his eyes on Taki rather than closing them against the demands of his body. The animal scent filled the air, and with a noise very like a sob, Klaus rested his head in Taki’s lap. Taki put his arms around the broad shoulders, and they stayed silent and close for long moments. This feeling expanding in Taki as he bent over Klaus and held him calm and controlled was… relief. Yes.

Eventually, Klaus shifted in Taki’s hold and looked up, his eyes soft in a way that Taki hadn’t seen for too long. “I can’t stay here,” he said, clearly grieved by it.

“No,” Taki said in regretful agreement. Klaus stood, but his gaze lingered on Taki. The ease in Taki fled, and he was painfully aware of how he must appear – nearly naked and smelling of sweat and sex. Shadow crossed Klaus’s face, but he smiled.

“I’d better get dressed. I’ve made scandal enough for you the last few days.” The wide mouth quirked in sour deprecation. “The last year or so, for that matter.”

Taki rose, dragging at his own clothes. His hands fumbled with the belt. “You will leave me to decide whether or not you create scandal.” It came out more sharply than he’d intended, but Klaus showed no sign of offence.

“As you say,” he said, the smile this time crooked but pleased.

Taki put his shirt back on, and he was beginning with the buttons when Klaus stepped nearer. He wore his uniform trousers, but nothing else. No shirt, no shoes. “Taki?”

Taki lifted his head, but he said nothing. Simply waited.

“You could make a stone look talkative,” Klaus said.

“Perhaps.”

“I know that you don’t want to talk about - anything. I don’t know if I understand it, I can make guesses, but…” Klaus stopped and began again. “I never meant to cost you so much.”

“No more than I’ve cost you.” A life as property, the renunciation of citizenship and all rights; Taki Reizen’s knight, here in this room, his hand gentle on Taki’s face.

“You haven’t cost me anything that I wasn’t willing to throw away.” 

Taki knew a sharp pang of envy – to not be torn between essential obligations, to be free to make one simple choice. Yes, he was envious.

Klaus bent to kiss him, and he permitted it. The hand on Klaus’s waist, the other on his shoulder, were to steady himself, no more. “Go back to your quarters,” he said.

Klaus nodded, and dressed. They stood there, informal but decorously separate – barring the hour, barring the scent that still hung in the air. Then Klaus jammed his hands into his pockets and said, “I’ll wake up tomorrow and think that I’ve dreamed this.”

“It was real enough,” Taki said. “Good night, Klaus.”

Klaus hesitated – as if he would take another kiss, as if he feared to disturb the dream. Then he turned away and unlocked the door and left. Taki heard his murmur of greeting to the aide in the hallway.

He left the door unlocked. At this moment he had nothing to hide, and he wondered at the calm in him. He’d done no more than he ought to from the beginning, and owned his own desires and a small portion of the wrong-doing that had come out of them. There should have been more – or much, much less - but still, just for this moment he felt peaceful. Maybe even happy.

**Author's Note:**

> My title is from a Dave Dobbyn song called I Never Left You. The full line goes 'Things done in earnest never got to stand.'


End file.
